Do Wind Chimes Keep Animals Away

Wind chimes are some of the most esoteric home decors that elevate outdoor spaces. They give a home an aura because it looks mysterious at times.

People say it can be used as a good luck charm. Others say it can help bring friendly visitors to your home. (We don’t know if any of these is true,) but the question some are asking is, ‘ can they keep animals away from their homes?

Wind chimes can keep some animals like squirrels, birds, and deer away from your home, but it is only for a while. Once the novelty of the sound wears off, they will keep coming.

About Wind Chimes

Wind chimes are those lovely decorative arrangements of small pieces of glass, metal, or shell suspended from a frame, typically hung near a door or window so as make a tinkling sound in the draught.

The gentle tinkling sound they give can be relaxing and stress-relieving. Someone once described it as a ‘musical instrument strummed by the wind.’

There are different varieties of wind chimes, and they include:

Metal Wind Chimes

They have a unique feature, and that is the fact that they can be tuned to musical notes. They make clear, piercing sounds ranging from low and calming notes to higher notes.

They are some of the most common wind chimes, usually made of copper, silver, aluminum, brass, and bronze. They are ubiquitous.

Bamboo / Wooden Wind Chimes

You go for a wooden or bamboo wind chime for a gentle clattering sound. It’s also great to keep in a kid’s bedroom because it produces soothing and cheering music. It might need to be louder to keep some animals away from your home.

Glass / Ceramic Wind Chimes

These are also known as pottery wind chimes. They are usually made of glass, pottery, or ceramics. Asides from the fact that it makes beautiful decor in your home because of its styles, it is also relatively inexpensive, and the sound they make is relatively sharp.

Do Wind Chimes Keep Animals Away?

There isn’t a straight Yes or No answer to this question. It is more a question of what animals can be scared away with a wind chime and for how long?

In the short run, most animals will keep away from your space if they hear the clattering sound of your wind chime. Still, if they keep tearing it for a while, the sound from the wind chimes gently blends into the sounds of nature, and once they get used to the noise, there is no keeping them away from your home because of the melody coming from your wind chime.

Some animals who were at first scared of the sound of a wind chime got so used to the sound that it is the very thing that attracts them to your backyard.

We will look at different animals, and the effect wind chime has in keeping them away from your space:

Bear

No research (at least known to us) proves that wind chime can scare bears away from your home. At the same time, it is logical that the wind chime’s unusual sound can deter bears with a significantly heightened sight of hearing from your space. There is nothing. However, that shows it can keep them off permanently.

At best, wind chime noises may startle or distract the animal from feeding or foraging around you, but it might not ultimately react negatively.

Bears can be attracted to a place by the noises they hear, smell, and sight of it, which means wind chime might be ineffective in keeping bears away.

Never be tempted to hang a metal wind chime or anyone that has bells. That is because metallic wondering chime carries over long distances, and that sound attracts bears.

Secondly, bears are territorial, and the sound a wind chime makes might give them the impression that there is a predator or intruder after them, and you can be sure that they will react.

Squirrels

Wind chimes are visual ornaments and percussion instruments around homes, and they have been known to scare squirrels away, but it is only for a while. The sound of wind chimes can startle squirrels and cause them to scamper.

For wind chime to be effective against squirrels, they must not be allowed to get used to the sound, or else it will blend into the noise they hear around your home, and once they are used to the sound, they will keep coming to your backyard.

You should, therefore, not allow squirrels to get used to a particular sound pattern from your wind chime. You can change the wind chime you hang in your garden. Using different types of wind chimes at different times ensures that the squirrels don’t get used to the sound.

It would be best if you hung a giant wind chime which will make a much louder sound that can scare squirrels away. The larger the wind chime, the louder the sound it makes.

The wind chimes should be placed in the direction of the wind so that their sound can be amplified. The garden away from the house is an excellent place to hang wind chimes so that the squirrels don’t mistake the sounds for regular human activity from within the house.

A trick to making your wind chime very effective against squirrels is to move the wind chimes around so that the source of the sounds is unpredictable to the squirrels.

It will ensure they don’t get accustomed to the source of the sound. Place several wind chimes on the potential entry points of squirrels to your home might work too.

Birds

Birds are curious animals, yet they are easily scared by noises. It means that the wind chime that scared them away today can get them so curious tomorrow, and they will keep coming to your home.

The soft, sweet, and chiming sound of a slight wind chime may be birds away for a day or 2, but if you use big or loud ones, you migraines them out of your home for a long time.

Place the wind chime near the bird’s nesting area or on your patio and ensure that a soft breeze is drafting through, or else it might not make a powerful sound to keep birds away.

One trick to make your wind chime a better deterrent is to get a metallic wind chime that shimmers when exposed to the sun.

Even adding some reflective trinkets, glass, mirrors, metallic ribbons, and old CDs to your wind chimes will cause them to be reflective, and birds do not like such things, so that they will keep away from your home.

Woodpeckers

Wind chimes don’t scare woodpeckers and so will not keep them away. That is because they are usually swamped in the higher parts of the trees, and it might not be practical to hang wind chimes so high up.

Pigeon

Keeping pigeons off your yard with wind chimes can be an uphill task because most pigeons live amongst humans and are used to most sounds, even the ones from a wind chime. Hence it might not startle them at all.

But if you live in the suburbs where it’s quieter, chances are that the pigeon there is not desensitized to the wind chime sound that may scare them.

Hummingbirds

These tiny birds can be a joy to have around, but if you’ve got lots of them in your home that are becoming a nuisance, you can use wind chimes to keep them away because they are easily startled by such noises around them.

The loud sound from a giant wind chime will surely make these small birds wary and nervous. Don’t use wind chimes that produce delicate tunes because they might have the opposite effect on them, as such sounds attract them.

Scarecrows

Only loud noise from a wind chime can scare a scarecrow, but it is still not enough to make them leave a place permanently. The fact that scarecrows love shiny things makes matters worse because the metallic wind or those with other shiny elements will attract them rather than keep them away.

Conclusion

Wind chimes are stunning pieces of practical art that can accentuate the beauty of our homes and produce soothing sounds that can help calm frayed nerves. They can be used in the short run to keep some animals away from your backyard, but only for so long.

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Most animals will eventually get used to the sound of the wind chime and return to your backyard. If you must use wind chimes to keep animals from your home, complement them with other deterrents for more effectiveness.